The clean energy sector will finally face certainty after the parliament passed legislation to slash the renewable energy target.

A bipartisan deal – agreed to last month after a lengthy political stalemate that hamstrung the clean energy sector – will slash the target from 41,000 gigawatt hours to 33,000.

Legislation inscribing that deal passed the Senate during an extended sitting late into Tuesday night.

[…]

Its passage comes after Prime Minister Tony Abbott boasted the deal would slash the target and restrict wind energy growth as much as possible.

Mr Abbott believes wind farms, the main beneficiary of the target that requires 20 per cent of Australia’s energy to come from renewables by 2020, are ugly and noisy.

From this story and also from the video that accompanies it, it seems the “clean energy sector” is entirely dependent on government mandates. No one is making cheaper energy through wind farms and then selling it to power companies by offering them a better deal than they can get from “fossil fuels.” They can only make it in the market because the government forces companies to use their products.

So the lesson here (compared to news from The Netherlands) may be that when the people get a vote, politicians are less likely to impose the costs of climate change hysteria on them. On the other hand, the courts can be used to “force” unnecessary energy costs onto the people.